


The Sharp Point of Honour

by baroque_mongoose



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 02:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2564918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroque_mongoose/pseuds/baroque_mongoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know how it is when two best friends get talking.  The conversation can range over all kinds of subjects... such as travel, life, love, and how on earth one of them once succeeded in unmasking the other one as a spy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sharp Point of Honour

**Author's Note:**

> This is set shortly after the events which take place in "Shadow Work", and alludes to some of them. It just about stands on its own, but will make better sense if the earlier story is read first.

“So how was India?” asked Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, looking up at his friend over the invention he was working on.

Sir Ardsley Wooster perched himself on the lab bench in a most un-ambassadorial fashion and handed over a small parcel. “India was quite wonderful,” he replied, beaming, “and I've brought this back for you.”

Gil looked at his hands, and then at the parcel. “Ah. Is it something that shouldn't get oily?”

“Yes, actually,” Sir Ardsley admitted. “You had perhaps better wait till your hands are clean. Shall I tell you what it is?”

“Yes, please.”

“It's a kurta. I bought several of them for myself. They're very comfortable.”

Gil stared at him, his face breaking slowly into a grin. “ _You_ wore a _kurta?_ Try as I might, I can't picture you in anything other than one of your stiff shirts.”

“Lucknow is exceedingly hot. And, since even my ambassadorial counterpart turned out to be wearing one when I went to see him...” Sir Ardsley smiled. “I'm not sure when you will want to wear yours, but, since you are after all Baron Wulfenbach, I don't think you need to wait for anyone else to decide when it's appropriate.”

“Yes, indeed. Although I do get a bit tired of being Baron Wulfenbach sometimes,” Gil admitted. “That's why I mess around here in the lab so much. It's relaxing.”

“I know. Oh, by the way, Gil, I ran into... someone you know.”

Gil raised an eyebrow. “You want me to guess? Well, from the expression on your face, I'd say it wasn't a pleasant encounter.”

“That's an understatement,” said Sir Ardsley, with a shudder.

“DuPree,” said Gil.

“Ah, you know her so well. Yes, indeed. DuPree. As you might imagine, she tried to kill me.”

“I can, but I thought you said she was in Italy, Ardsley?”

“Oh, she was for a long time. So long that she can now swear very competently in Italian.”

Gil grinned. “There is a story you are not telling me. Such as why you are still alive. I am, of course, very glad you're still alive; but I'm guessing that your continued existence may be linked in some way to DuPree swearing in Italian.”

“Well, rather more the other way round, but yes, in fact. You see, it was like this.” And, with that, Sir Ardsley proceeded to recount to his friend the circumstances of his unexpected meeting with DuPree in Lucknow.

“Sweet lightning,” said Gil, when he had finished. “You've always insisted that your niece is more intelligent than you, but I thought that was just your modesty. I think now I believe it.”

“I am never modest about my intelligence, whatever I am in other respects,” replied Sir Ardsley simply.

“True. If you were, you'd be a damned hypocrite,” said Gil.

“That is a great compliment, especially from you. But, yes, indeed. Harriet is remarkably clever, by any standards. And that does rather lead me to another question, which I'm rather surprised I've never asked you before.”

“What's that?” asked Gil.

“I've always wondered. How in the world did you and your father manage to unmask me as a spy? I thought I had been careful to the point of paranoia.”

Gil sighed. “Urgh. Ardsley. I really wish you hadn't asked that question. I mean, you've tried to bring the conversation round that way a few times, but... now you've asked me flat out, I've got to answer you.”

Sir Ardsley looked at him thoughtfully. “Well... you don't _have_ to. But I can't see why it's such a difficult question to answer. We're good friends, I'm no longer a spy, and I don't mind hearing about my weak points. You know I don't. It helps me to strengthen them.”

“I know,” said Gil, wretchedly. “And that's exactly the problem. If you'd undone yourself on a weak point, I could have told you, because I would know you wouldn't mind. But you didn't. You fell over on one of your strengths.”

“I did?” Sir Ardsley looked surprised. “You mean I didn't think everything through properly?”

“Oh, sweet lightning, not your brains. Your brains were in full working order, I can assure you. If it hadn't been for that one glitch, Father and I between us wouldn't have had a hope of beating you, and you _know_ how clever Father was. No. You came unstuck because you're Ardsley Wooster and not Gil Wulfenbach. And that doesn't make me feel good, because at the time Ardsley Wooster was a much better man than Gil Wulfenbach.” He made a face. “I like to think I've learned since then.”

“Perhaps, instead of beating yourself over the head about it, you should just tell me,” Sir Ardsley suggested gently. “Then at least it will all be out in the open.”

Gil sighed. “All right. I owe you that, now I've flannelled about as far as this. Well... you know how things were in Paris.”

Sir Ardsley raised an eyebrow.

“In that, specifically, I had a pretty wild life,” Gil continued. “Now, when we first got to know each other, I took to you because of your brains.”

“That was entirely mutual,” replied Sir Ardsley.

“Yes. I could tell that. But apart from the brains, we were two very different personalities. And, very soon, you started to puzzle me quite a lot. I mean, yes, you were English and you were almost stiflingly modest and proper, so I could understand that you didn't want to go out chasing the more, shall we say, easy-going ladies of the town. That made sense. But I soon began to realise that there was more to it than that. You were the sort of person who might well have been behaving himself because he had some nice young lady back in England; but I asked, and you didn't. There was no young lady anywhere on the scene in Paris, either. I even briefly wondered if you liked men, but I didn't have to wonder that for long; you clearly didn't. Did you know, by the way, that Alonzo had quite a thing for you? It's probably safe to tell you that now.”

Sir Ardsley blinked. “Alonzo? Really? Oh dear. He must have been most disappointed.”

“Well, he was, but he ended up with that Canadian boy, so all's well that ends well,” said Gil. “And here's a thing which is relevant. You were surprised just now when I told you about Alonzo. Do you have any idea how many girls were after you, as well as him?”

“I know there were one or two,” said Sir Ardsley.

Gil guffawed. “One or two! One or two, he says. Do you seriously think that?”

“Well, of course! They were all busy chasing you,” replied Sir Ardsley, with a smile. “It was actually rather convenient. I didn't want all the fuss.”

“Oh, you _innocent_ ,” said Gil. “You really had no idea, did you? I could have thrown something at you sometimes, except that I could see at the time that you really genuinely had no clue, and after all we were good friends. Half the girls I really wanted wouldn't look at me because of you. Did you not know that? They weren't interested in some mad rakehell when there was his tall, dark, handsome, incredibly gentlemanly English friend to go after. And some of them clearly liked a challenge.” He grinned. “Good job they did.”

“Oh, now, Gil, you are pulling my leg,” said Sir Ardsley. “I refuse to believe I was so popular. Besides, if I may say so, you were never short of female company.”

“Granted, I wasn't,” replied Gil. “But, take it from me, you were popular, and generally with what one might call the better class of young lady. They liked your manners. I will admit I hadn't got a lot of those at the time. I have improved since then, I think.”

“You were, I will admit, a little forward,” Sir Ardsley agreed.

“I was, and you were a long way backward,” Gil countered, with a grin. “It was as if you were in some kind of bubble. I can't put it better than that. But it wasn't until Mireille came along that I understood the nature of that bubble, insofar as I was able to understand it at the time. Do you, by any chance, recall Mireille?”

“Ah. Yes. She was one of the few young ladies I know to have been definitely interested in me,” replied Sir Ardsley. “And she was extraordinarily persistent.”

“Which is how you managed to notice her at all, yes,” said Gil.

“Yes, but she was embarrassing. I didn't return her affections, but she would not accept that.”

“Indeed. And eventually you broke under the pressure, and told her that your affections were given elsewhere. So she came running to me to find out who your young lady was, and I had to tell her I hadn't the faintest idea. You had been very quiet about all that with me.”

“Well, my affections certainly were given elsewhere, but as far as I knew they were unrequited,” Sir Ardsley explained. “Nonetheless...”

“Nonetheless, it's unusual not to mention them to your best friend,” said Gil. “So I had two possibilities to consider. Either you had lied to Mireille, or you had some reason for being very discreet indeed about whoever you were involved with. Neither of them made a lot of sense, at least at first. I already knew that you could be, shall we say, very subtle when you needed to, but a direct lie was not your style. And what sort of woman would a Sir Galahad like you be involved with whom he couldn't tell his best friend about? You'd never dream of messing around with a married woman. Oh, you were a real puzzle.”

“I'm deducing you solved it,” said Sir Ardsley, with a slightly rueful expression.

“Yes, I did, but it took some thinking,” replied Gil. “A couple of days later, the answer suddenly hit me. It must be an unrequited passion, probably one that the lady didn't know about because you weren't in a position to tell her, or at least didn't feel that you were. That made perfect sense. You wouldn't bandy a lady's name around if you were in that kind of position. It was still a little surprising that you hadn't even told me, but I'll admit I was a bit of a drunkard, and it was possible you feared something might slip out while I was the worse for wear. And that was when I had my little idea.”

“Your little idea?” asked Sir Ardsley, carefully.

“Yes. To be honest, at the time I thought you were such a stuffed shirt that you had no idea how to go about telling this mysterious lady that you'd fallen for her, and so I thought I'd do you a favour. I decided to find out who she was and manoeuvre a meeting between you. I was going to get you a little drunk first and prime you with helpful hints on impressing women.”

Sir Ardsley ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, great Scott. I see it all now.”

Gil nodded. “I did have to use a couple of my father's detectives, if that makes you feel any better. You were not an easy nut to crack. But in the end I tracked down the Princess Orlov, and found out all the fascinating details of how you saved her life from that Russian agent.”

“And so I was unmasked,” said Sir Ardsley, ruefully.

“Indeed, and I could hardly go ahead and arrange for you to see the Princess again in those circumstances. Which was a great pity, because she was keen to see you again. Very... keen, in fact.”

“Oh,” said Sir Ardsley.

Gil sighed. “Ack. That was incredibly tactless of me. I'm sorry, Ardsley. Some things are better not known.”

“Well, like Alonzo, things came out well for me in the end,” Sir Ardsley pointed out. “I'm very happily married.”

“Indeed. But if you hadn't unexpectedly turned out to be a spy, I'd have been more than happy to have got you and the Princess together to get your mutual unrequited love problem sorted out. You would have made a good couple. She had brains. Nice woman, too, though I wouldn't have gone for her. A bit too old for me.”

“By most people's standards she was also too old for me, but if two people agree that doesn't matter for them, it doesn't matter,” replied Sir Ardsley. “But, really, that's all ancient history now. I'm happy. I hope she is, too.” He paused. “Anyway, Gil, how do you work out that I fell over on one of my strengths? From what you've just told me, I fell over because I admitted to Mireille that I was in love with someone else. I hadn't intended to do that. I'd count that as a weakness.”

Gil frowned at him. “All right. You're good at putting yourself into other people's shoes. Put me in your shoes for a moment, instead. How do you think I'd have reacted in your situation if I'd had a pretty girl like Mireille throwing herself at me the way she did at you?”

“Ah,” said Sir Ardsley.

“Yes, exactly. And I'm not proud of that, not these days. It took Agatha to get me to understand where you were coming from.” He sighed. “When I was in Paris, I was basically out for what I could get. You know what my father was like; he was very strict, and the way he brought me up wasn't easy. So the moment I was let off the lead, as it were, I decided I was going to grab what I could while I had the chance. But you...” He looked up at his friend. “You were always out for what you could give. And you'd never give anything less than a hundred per cent in love, would you?”

“Well, quite so, and that's why I had to turn Mireille down,” said Sir Ardsley, a little embarrassed. “I couldn't give her my heart when someone else already had it.”

“Yes, and that was obvious to you at the time. It's obvious to me, now. I couldn't look at anyone but Agatha.”

“Indeed. Dare I ask how things are progressing on that front?”

“Same old,” replied Gil, gnomically.

“Ah. I'm sorry.”

“Well. Politics is a pain when it gets tangled up in love affairs.”

Sir Ardsley made a face.

“I... have noticed,” he said, with a sigh.


End file.
